SRINAGAR, Oct 23: Indian Oscar entry film ‘Barfi’ has a Kashmir valley youth bitter and livid. Majid Yousuf Dar (34), a sports manager with the state’s leading J&K Bank, claims the movie has used his picture without permission and portrayed him in a bad light by showing him as a bank robber.
Dar is inititaiting a legal proceeding against the production house UTv Motion Pictures.
Dar, a resident of Srinagar’s Dalgate area, was flooded with phone calls from friends in Mumbai and Delhi immediately after the release of the film last month.
“First, I took it as a prank from my friends. Then my Delhi-based cousin informed me about the use of my pictures. I watched the film to find myself as one of the robbers pointed out by a police inspector in the movie,” alleged Dar.
The controversial scene shows the lead actress Ileana D’Cruz entering a police station looking for lead actor Ranbir Kapoor. The police inspector informs her that Kapoor has been arrested because he is among bank robbers, pointing towards two pictures of Dar in the wanted list along with other mugshots of robbers.
The portrayal of Kashmiri youth has come at a time when they are struggling with their image in the rest of the country. “One, the moviemakers did not take permission. Two, dared to show a respectable person as a robber. I received a call from my seniors in the office too asking me to explain why I was shown as robber in the movie. It seems the picture has been downloaded from the Internet and pasted there twice, making it starkly prominent,” said Dar.
Dar’s Delhi-based lawyer Sajad Sultan is initiating a legal proceeding against the production house UTv films. “We are filing a defamation case for damaging Dar’s reputation by showing him in bad light. Two, the prior permission was not sought. The portrayal is bound to have people drawing inferences,” said lawyer Sultan.
Anurag Basu’s ‘Barfi’ might me making sweet success story but bitter controversy seems to trail the movie again.
Earlier, the production house got a legal notice for infringing copyrights of a firm. According to the firm, the film used the words ‘Murphy’, ‘Murphy Radio’ and ‘Murphy Munna’, a registered brand name, in the title song without prior written permission. The firm had similar claims made by Dar that “the song Ala Barfi, the brand Murphy Radio is unambiguously mentioned and perceivably in a negative light.” (Hindustan Times)
